“Since 2006 when we started operations of Metro Systems Romania we’ve hired about 100 people a year, so we now have 760. We are currently looking for 40 more,” Juergen Boekholt, managing director of Metro Systems Romania told ZF in an interview.
The local team of the IT division of Metro first consisted of IT experts working for the Metro Cash&Carry network. The company started recruitment in 2006 as more and more group-wide responsibilities were transferred to it.
The team in Romania contributes to the most important activities of Metro Systems from design, development, delivery and implementation of IT solutions to quality checks, infrastructure operation and support and maintenance services, says Sorin Lapadat, managing director of Metro Systems Romania.
“The entire group uses the solutions developed in Romania,” Lapadat said.
The company expanded operations with a support center it opened in Brasov this year, which serves Metro headquarters.
Metro Systems Romania is the only subsidiary that provides development, operation and IT systems administration services, says Juergen Boekholt, who has been running the company since 2007.
Other types of support are outsourced to India, where the group works with external partners, he added.
Metro first surveyed the Romanian IT industry in 2005 to find out whether it could open a development and support center in the country and the results were good so Bucharest was chosen for the investment, Boekholt recalls.
The company found very good tech capabilities and a workforce with good English skills. It decided to open a development and hosting business in Romania in 2005 and in August 2006 started the recruitment campaign to complement the team of 50 IT experts it got from Metro Cash&Carry. It began hiring software developers to work on business intelligence, middleware or merchandising applications, he added.
Metro, one of Europe’s largest retailers, with 2,200 stores in 31 countries and more than EUR60 billion annual revenue, chose Romania in 2005 because of the favorable labor market and the presence of the cash&carry store chain, which provided the crew to build the new company on, Juergen Boekholt said.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)